


A look in the eye

by Whaler



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Devil Ending, Game-Typical disturbing Themes, M/M, Major Spoilers, V and Johnny are not friends, V doesn't die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:46:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28177110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whaler/pseuds/Whaler
Summary: This is how my V-Takemura romance would've ideally played out - if we could have any.
Relationships: Goro Takemura/Male V, Goro Takemura/V
Comments: 10
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I wouldn't say I miss a Takemura romance from the game because it gives the character dignity but I also adore the man so here we are.  
> Also, this story focuses on V, as per my interpretation of V through the game who had quite the animosity toward Johnny and a fascination toward the tech of Arasaka. You might say he didn't learn his lesson after all.
> 
> Also, this is tooth-rotting at times, like seriously, proceed with caution.

Mentally, V was screaming. He kept his eyes tightly shut, desperately trying to banish the echoing voices, nausea, and crippling pain. He was lying on the floor where the most recent blackout had sent him. The third in a week. Fucking Johnny in his fucking head, the fucking chip, the fucking... He couldn’t form a clear thought withering on the floor, but at any other time, he could recall that fucking moment so clear; Jackie peering into his eyes telling V without words how he won't go back to the streets, how he will be a nobody no more. He does this if it costs his life and V’s life apparently, which was stupid all right, but V hadn’t fucking died before, so he couldn’t know.

H e knew now . K new  too damn well h ow the last flicker feels like . 

So ,  he screamed at night and screamed at blackouts , cried  u nconscious tears on the aftermath of the  pills , clinging tightly to the rest of his  tortured  mind. S entenced to live with two people’s experience of  death, he d ied a little, faded a little with every blackout. That slipping away, that cold  nothing, the...  _ silence _ around him and the darkness drew him mad . The last flicker of his consciousness haunted his waking moments .  He dreamed of it at night , a bout how Johnny died. He died.  How they both will die again.

He expected Johnny to be  there at that moment , he imagined he heard the cruel jibs at the edge of his mind, saw the thick  boots  towering in front of  him so degradingly.  Heard the reassurance that the other man wanted this to end  as well , that he had no ulterior motive of taking over. 

V knew better. V knew fucking better. Knew with Dex, knew with Jackie, knew with Rogue and with fucking Johnny. Like Saburo Arasaka knew with Goro Takemura —with a look in the eyes. V knew both trust and betrayal from the start. He knew the friendship the second Jackie and him looked at each other on the sidewalk, knew Dex will betray them at the first opportunity right when he sat in the car. He just never did anything  against it. For Jackie’s  sake—because V was loyal to a  fault and to  death, apparently —and for his own ego and arrogance. But  Yorinobu and his  fucking schemes goddamn … Of all the times he could’ve  killed his  father! And after. Saving a chip more important than his own life. An object. An engram of a terrorist.  If Takemura ‘s caught them  in the wall...

Goro Takemura, the man V didn’t see  coming; n o t the ties, the  alliance, or the  friendship—a very, very different friendship  than the ones he had the luck to have before .

Takemura wouldn’t’ve liked his pre- heist self,  or V’s  everyday,  arrogant, disrespectful, cringe attitude. B ut  twice- dead and lessons learned, V liked to think he matured up to his thirties  in the end . He liked to think he  w ould be  smarter from now on—if he has the chance.

He couldn’t feel the ground under his body, just the cold, the  unmovingness , the ringing silence of the air and the numbing pain  arching his body to a ball . The smell of filth and sand  filled his  nostrils, crept  up directly into his mind . Hot and cold, course and cutting, light and darkness, drowning. And there was fuck all to do, fuck all to talk to, fuck all to go to because the only three people—scratch that—two people who knew about what was happening to him were… were… 

What? Too busy? Too far? 

He fumbled about  for his own arm, dragged his  own consciousness out of the  choking, oily lake of the  blackout. He hit call like it was the red button which disarmed the bomb, like it was  his  brother ’s number and he was a  kid stuck  in a hole a midst of shooting.

He sent a call and the call went. Ring one. Ring two. The noise reminded him  of Vi k ’s clinic. Ring three.  Chrome shaman, fucking Pacifica... Ring four. Lying at Vi k 's unconscious, scared, pained, with a man leaning over him for just a moment and V thinking the exact same thing he thought hiding in the wall in the  Plaza —ring five—Arasaka really employs the finest. 

“V.” 

“How did you find me? Back then.” His voice was strained and the tears hadn’t dried up but they weren’t conscious anyway. “You knew the second Saburo wasn’t poisoned, I  heard it in your voice. You knew what’s up the exact fucking second because you are a clever son of a bitch, so of course, you checked records, of course, you spo t t ed the two unknown arm dealers, found the car, the motel ,  but then you found me in a landfill in just a few hours. That’s magic. That you shouldn’t have been able to do.”

Shame and disdain rose in his  throat, tasted like Johnny’s  bile. Calling this man with this question. But V wasn’t like Johnny. Wasn’t like Johnny at all. V needed trust and ties and bonds and he didn ’ t have any. Not really. Just this one. Maybe.  But he needed this one like he needed air. The ones who knew him  wouldn’t give a fuck about him ceasing to exist in his own body. He breathed hard like he was choking.

Breaths and silence  answered  at the other  end of the line , the darkness  and pain around V’s body felt like a tight hol d . Not pain b u t a pulsing numbness  th at was worse, his mind fighting and failing an intruder. Arasaka tech.  Evil. Not evil. Fucking  astonishing because V knew  everything a  street kid c ould know about technology and couldn’t help to be  as impressed as terrified.

“It had been almost two days, not a few hours,” the hesitant answer came. “I was sent for your corps to be questioned then run with it.” 

“Run with it…” V  echoed  and listened to the silence on the line. “I was  more than half dead and you were bleeding badly, slumped down at the side of the road…” 

“As you said, I kn e w  what was going on.”

“ I’m lucky you need me then, right?  Else—” 

“Are you drunk, Thief?” 

“I don’t want to die,” the confession escaped through the clearing numbness. Silence again. V’s head cleared ever so slowly, he turned onto his back in the filth and faint glow of the street lamp. “I’ve been in the  Clouds, talked to a guy, Angel, about death. It’s fucked up, so fucking fucked up.” 

“Where are you? Is Johnny there?” Cold. So cold that tone… the gloving eyes. The small smile sometimes.  Arasaka’s finest  his ass. 

“Not anymore.” 

“Are you injured?” 

“No. I just… I… I'll be fine, just…” Silence. Hesitation at the other  end as well . V swallowed and felt younger in that moment, a child on the streets again, after one of his first beatings. He didn’t want to live like this anymore. Didn’t want to be the clever  asshole making bad decisions, ghosting through a city that will eat him, literally, sooner or later. But Takemura had nothing to do with that, the bodyguard of one of the most  powerful men in the world. A weapon, crippled now but just as deadly, standing up against Arasaka in his sense of honor.

V had a sense of honor as well , and loyalty  thick as blood. A thief’s honor toward his acquaintances, his fixers, toward Takemura. Not because the man saved V's life but because of the man Goro Takemura was : calm,  loyal, honorable. Brainwashed, Johnny  would call  him, t amed to lick  boots, s o far up in the arasaka asses he could lick their brains from the inside. Johnny wasn’t wrong  but  V  remembered how respectful Takemura was  to people V  expected him to be trash toward.  V learned respect from a  corpo and  with that he couldn’t  go more against Johnny.

V liked to think he matured up. He also liked to think  the pointed gazes from Takemura aren’t all reprimanding anymore.

“If you are worried if I’ll manage the parade — ” 

“If I had any doubt about your capability I would say so.” 

“And do you say so?” 

“Yes. I'm worried. But I’m not worried only because of the parade. Can you come back to the city?” 

V tried to move and managed to sit upright, crawled to a wall to lean against with a grunt. “Eventually. I need… I need to…” He shut his eyes, counted to ten. Not really. Just deep breaths. The world vibrated but the voice helped, thinking helped. His bike waited outside but his head was a mess, hands were shaking, and emotionally… well. So, he closed his eyes. 

“We should be as much apart as possible.  I can’t keep  Arasaka from you fore v er .” Right, V wanted to say but didn’t. He knew that, understood it to a fault, so he kept silent and it occurred to him to disconnect but he didn’t. They weren’t there to be friends or  support for  each other. Thought they turned out to be just that, in a way, because V understood how much Takemura lost and Takemura understood how much V did. 

“It’s not wise.” V's stupid decisions affecting Takemura, getting him discovered and killed. And there was silence again on the other side, then curses  in low Japanese. A  jacket put on , frustrated, echoing steps, noises of the city, cars, then a muffled interior of a closed space. An engine. They didn’t talk for many-many minutes. 

“How do you know where I am?” V asked eventually. 

“...I may have a tracker on you.” 

V scoffed. “Trust issues?” But of course, Takemura had trust issues especially toward someone like V, a lowlife merc fucked in the head. 

“If Yorin obu  gets you first I  will know it too late .  Please don’t look for the tracker.” 

Right, V almost said, then didn’t. He stared at the dirty wall instead, focusing on the breaths and filth to avoid the existential dread. It wasn’t like he had absolutely no one to call, but if Takemura wouldn’t have answered there wouldn’t be anybody he wanted to call instead. 

Johnny despised Takemura, Arasaka, the world in general, insisted the man will betray  V , play him, kill him, toss him the second V is not needed anymore. V wasn’t like Johnny in any way. No. Most ways. But he couldn’t tell the little in common was original or  the sign of the change. 

“Still homesick?” 

“This city is filth.” 

V snorted. “And Tokyo isn’t?” 

“Not where I live, no.” Right. V stared at the wall. Right. Not everything is  all ey , sand, and rat’s nest. Not even in Night City. He listened to the silence of the desert and, after some time,  to  the low rumble of an approaching engine; heard Takemura parking through the link in synchrony with the noises around. Then silence again, V watched the spot where the reflectors shined through the dirt of the window while nothing moved. 

The other man stayed seated. 

“I don’t think you incapable, V,” Takemura said in the silence through the link. “I’ve seen your work, heard the stories about you. Asking for help is not condemnable.” 

“And you’re willing to deep dive in this mess?” V shook his head  to the empty room. 

“I chose this,  as I recall. ”  He did, V thought, but he chose the fugitive  life,  harm and crippling for  Saburo Arasaka .  Now, Takemura was there for  V, no  Arasaka ties, no life’s duty. V  refused to think too deeply into that  for his own sanity  and stared at the lights on the wall till the reflector was turned  off . 

Silence, then  a car door closed through the link and for real outside. Steps, the creaking  of  the old plastic of the patio of the shackle V was huddled  in. The main door opened, closed, approaching steps  inside  knowing exactly where to find him. The old door opened beside V and Takemura was staring down at him with those silver eyes.

“You look like shit,” Takemura said. V grin -grimaced and the older man crouched down beside him, grabbed his wrist to check his pulse, laid a cool hand  on V’s forehead to check the temperature, shone a light into his eye to make sure  reflexes worked as they were supposed to. Then instead of urging V to his feet, Takemura slumped down beside him to the ground. 

Silence. They had many silences and many great conversations when neither of them was distracted. V had the notion to smoke, Johnny in his head… He fisted his hand. Takemura was watching. “It’s not always this bad. I can keep it together.” 

“What’s different this time?” V couldn’t tell, and that made him look like a fool stating just now how in control he was, and he is. Most of the time. Takemura didn’t argue the silence but grunted. “Did you need me here?” 

Yes, V wanted to say but stared  at his fists instead. The desert continued to be silent, the light of the street light buzzed with electricity. Long shadows, longer silence. There were times he just wanted to be weak, for the briefest of seconds just… be weak and not get shit about it. The city kill ed everyone who g ave up, though, no matter how briefly. The last time put a bullet in his head. 

“I manage,” V said. “I’m fine.” He works on like always, shakes off shit like always. It’s a shame he made the other drive an hour for that. 

“Good.” But Takemura didn’t move, instead, as V sat there, knees pulled up, arms resting on them, he felt a hand hooking on his arm. V glanced over, watched the profile of the other man, the silver eyes glowing just the slightest, sharp cheekbones, salt and pepper hair tied up, features so real and human  over the implants,  marred with almost unnatural exhaustion and weariness. 

Those eyes shone red and angry at the landfill, like a demon; were quite natural staring down at him with worry as Takemura tried to keep him alive in the car, filled with pain and satisfaction when the man finally collapsed on Vik’s doorstep from the many injuries. 

V admired the strength in that man, the person he was under the persona of the bodyguard, liked to see the world through his eyes, was proud of him of how straight he stood even ripped off of his implants, the hormones, the fine- tunedness and balance of the body. When from one day to another the implants turn back to parts, to alien objects in a flesh body. A Lego structure as the  flesh starts to remember what’s what. Discomfort and pain. Exhaustion and that haunted look… A shell. 

V was familiar with the degradation, saw it on his brother day by day. Ten years older than V, his brother worked  corpo ,  got  pretty  high for a no-one , kept them fed and clothed, then was ripped from the implants when  an espionage went astray. 

His brother  wouldn’t kill a fly till he sent a bullet to his own head broken by his own abandoned body.

So, V knew. Saw it. Closely. Felt it on his skin. Intimately. Tragedy chased him to Atlanta.  The same  thing chased him back. He e xplained the whole sob story to the other man on the roof  on their  reconnaissance.

The  s ame  pain he saw on Takemura except  the willingness to give up. Not just yet anyway. The same in V himself, the not just  yet, no matter how he craved the cigarette,  how much he  lost. Just be alive o ne more day  at a time , f ighting till there is a  fight to fight . For h is own  survivor for the first time , because he had this thing of fighting other’s battles , f irst h is  brother's , then  Jackie's ,  n ow  Takemura's .  Always fighting  for  someone else because V needed ties more than he needed goals. In Johnny’s world, there were only Johnny and the seconds. 

Running after others, being an ignorant, arrogant brat—as Takemura called him on the roof—landed him here, landed him with Johnny and dead. But now there was a hand on his arm and silence. “I—” am sorry for dragging you here, he wanted to say. 

“That Mexican place you told me about,” Takemura said instead. “Any chance it’s still open?” 

V’s pulse quickened; he checked the time. Close to midnight. An hour back to the city, more to Watson. “No. But I can make a call, order food, grab it at mama Welles, eat it at—” my place. No. Well, yes, but no. No because of the arch hetero Johnny in his head and V’s need of ties but yes indeed exactly because of his need  of ties and no because whatever of Takemura. And Arasaka. And needing to spend as little time together as possible. “Eat it wherever.” 

The hand stayed. V swallowed the whatever clenching his throat. 

“And you promise it’s real food? You swear?” 

V smiled at the seriousness and the memories of Takemura bashing the fast-food V consumed without tasting. “Too good for junk food? Too rich?” 

“I cook my own at home or eat at  Arasaka .” 

V hadn’t cooked one thing in his life. “My building has exactly zero kitchens. Couldn’t afford anything fresh anyway.” 

“I’m not the least surprised.” There was disgust in that voice and V grinned. 

“C’mon it’s not that bad.” Takemura glared at him with indignation but with the hand resting still where it had been on V’s arm. “I swear that Mexican is real food though.” 

“Order then,” Takemura stood, offered a hand to V, and pulled him up when he accepted. The world spun, disorientation hit V hard again and Takemura watched him, noting the most minuscule of trouble. Pathetic. The older man turned and V f ollowed him out of the lonely farmhouse, to the sand and trash and rusting equipment. 

“Car I drove here is stolen,”  Takemura circled the jeep he arrived with and took his place on V’s bike, “I drive.” So, he did. V took his place behind the man, wrapped his arms around his torso and they went into the dark night. The warm light of the lonely streetlamp was left behind with the silence.  Instead, the night got filled with  e ngine and light  with the radio  with some soothing, high-pitched pop. Fast-flying darkness, some nature, some trash, some other people in other vehicles, then the storages, the firms, the city, the heart of the city rusted and dead and infested by bugs and rodents but home. But not just yet. 

The road was long back and V listened to the music and the road, the warm body, and breaths against his chest,  the smell and touch of the fabric on his cheeks as he laid his head onto Takemura’s shoulder. The good and the bad. In his mind’s eyes, he saw the young Takemura, a child really, running down to the river, washing his clothes to look decent for  Arasaka . To be chosen. To be given a life. A choice. An education. A chance to be everything he is capable  of—and boy, that was something! 

He saw the hope and desperation in that child’s eye and saw a child’s wonder in Takemura’s eyes upon seeing the cat on the roof. He heard Takemura telling him he wondered about running and V knew with conviction he never  will, e xactly because he once had been a child in the slums washing his clothes in a filthy river for  Arasaka . V closed his eyes and pushed just a little bit closer. Takemura reacted but gave no indication of pulling away. 

Saburo  Arasaka’s bodyguard. Johnny would’ve gutted him given the chance, but V remembered how Saburo chose Takemura by looking into his eye and while Takemura wouldn’t look V in the eye  while  telling the  story, he did plenty of times before and after, so V knew what Saburo did, that Takemura is loyal. Lapdog tamed successfully; Johnny would say. Again, Johnny was not wrong. V also knew Takemura is a good man—with all the same good and bad like any other. 

His grip fastened around the other man as the lights of the city engulfed them. Advertisements as far as he could see, the never-empty roads. The buy, buy, buy—not for V’s broke-ass of course, and not for someone in Takemura’s status, but somewhere in-between. He remembered that strange existence from his childhood. An absent father, an ever-working mother,  corpo brother… But the city was beautiful like this, on the road. Gods, how many times he took these roads! Uncountable, unforgettable, still a nobody to these walls  and alleys . A rodent. 

The bike parked in a dark- ish side-street , V got off to grab their food then just stood there, bags in hand, watching Takemura’s strong form sitting on the bike, where he left him, checking the surroundings with the same exhaustion and worry but with a new kind of sternness on his face. 

“It sucks pissing of a  corp specializing in warfare, isn't it?” 

Takemura looked at him like V was stupid. “You have the mantis, the katana, the revolver, the eyes, the legs, and the clothes all  Arasaka .” 

“I never said they weren’t the best,” V shrugged. “That’s the problem exactly.” The other man considered him, silver eyes scanning him from head to toe then landing on the bags with the food. V couldn’t help the smile. “So, we can eat here, can go back to Japantown and piss them off with the Mexican, then there is your place or mine.” The silence stretched again. “I also know a quiet place behind a dumpster and a corner with a friendly vending machine.” 

That got him a raised eyebrow but then Takemura shook his head. “I don’t have a place.” 

V opened his mouth to say something then closed it. Of course he  didn't , running and hiding as he  was , and V knew what that was like. Running on empty. Running on hopes or numbness. Takemura looked older than he  actually  was in the sole reflector of the bike. 

“I do,” V said. “With a shower and a bed. And I know what it sounded like but I won’t… I don’t assume to…” 

“You aren’t trying to fuck me,” Takemura helped and V swallowed. 

“You can take a good night’s sleep. I’m not some  joytoy , or the other way around. ” 

“Neither am I.” 

“Good,” V said aloud now. “Good.” Then he was at loss. “So, the bazar or a bench or…” 

“It’s not a wise idea,” Takemura said and V knew from the tone and from the gaze that the other  was still talking about going to V’s place. A wise idea it was definitely not, but V was a clever man who hardly made smart choices. Stuck to friends even past the point of no return. Built ties to people he had no business reaching o ut for.  He never tried to talk down Jackie, never tried to not stick the damn chip into his head. And now, when he saw Takemura exhausted, weary, hungry, past a two hours' drive gathering him up after a breakdown V should’ve been able to handle just fine he… fell into old habits. Clung to old habits. And more. Way more. 

“Then say no,” V said. Takemura didn’t say no, he also didn't say anything else. He listened to something on his link or their surroundings with an attentiveness that shut V right out. V listened too but there was nothing unusual going on. A low Japanese drew his attention back but the translator failed to catch it. 

“They may've taken my implants but I have more tricks up in my sleeve,” Takemura said in  English when V asked.

“How are you anyway?” 

The other scoffed with a tired but cruelly amused glint in his silver eyes. “It’s not the first time a  corp is looking for me. I won’t end up like your brother. I also won’t let them find you or me for a minor convenience.” 

“Right.”  That was as smart as smart gets in a situation like this.  The reckless  Takemura, the one who will infiltrate  the ship of the most important woman in the city by jumping  down onto it of all things, the one  trusting a guy with the messed -up head and the blackouts to keep him alive.  T h at  Takemura wouldn’t take  an y  unnecessary danger. 

V  made his living diving into unnecessary danger. Johnny did it for fun. Johnny went around burning bridges and V kept up bridges even  when they burnt him. “So? ” he asked.

Silence, but V’s gaze met with the silver and at that moment, V knew very well how badly Takemura will burn him. Maybe not intentionally. Maybe there w as trust and respect somewhere down the line. So, V gave an address and Takemura looked toward the open road at the other end of the  street . “Come, I’m hungry!” 

T hey went, V on the back again holding onto  the body and the food. They parked in the garage of V’s building, took the elevator  standing in the far corners,  watching the respective views of the city, listening  to  the porn voices of the advertisement. Then a ping, the elevator opening, the floors, the stairs, some  greetings  from the ever-present locals. V’s apartment door  opening , closing, then silence.

V headed for the small desk to place the food and give t i me for the o ther to look around.  “I would give you a tour, but you know, this is it.” 

“It’s big.” 

“Big?” 

“In Japan, people sleep in pods. Thousands of stacked pods and mass showers.” 

“You too?” 

“No. I have a fine place. With a kitchen.” Right, really, he said so, V thought trying and failing not to imagine the man in some fine ass penthouse cooking dinner of all things. He smiled. 

“Shower or eat first?” 

“Eat.” 

They washed hands and V served food in the plastic containers on the low table at the corner of the room. Takemura sat opposite of him, opened the containers. The smell of freshly baked food was a nice change to the rubbish of the desert, the city, and the lingering aftertaste of the junk V consumed. Takemura took a good look at the food, poked it with a fork. He looked like he was considering a dive to a black hole, the greatest chance he ever could take in his life, then he sighed. “ Itadakimasu .” 

V waited the first few bites, amused, watched the expressions shift on Takemura’s face. “Not good?” he asked. 

“Better,” the other man looked up. “Mine’s even better, but it is a considerable improvement  to the previous meals .” 

“Who would’ve thought you so… so…” V considered the right word. 

“Distinguished? 

“Picky.” 

Takemura scoffed a laugh and V grinned as well. He felt lighter, more at ease, almost calm for the first time since he woke at Vik’s clinic. Takemura looked more at ease as well, the tension in his shoulder lessened, the lines  on his face told of exhaustion, not of constant weariness of danger. He didn’t assume V would harm him or didn’t  assume V would be able. Training and all.  Arasaka's finest. It was something to think about. 

They didn’t talk while they  ate but did after. V told the other about the city, his growing up, the gigs, the Clouds, Judy, Emily, and Takemura listened, poured him V’s strongest drink as he explained Emily and they drank  to her memory. In exchange, Takemura told him about growing up and working for  Arasaka , told him about Saburo, the ideas, the deeds, the good, the bad, and the sick. Told him about faraway strange lands, other countries he visited, other lives he had seen. 

The farthest V got from Night  C ity was Atlanta. He hadn’t had the chance to be schooled after the first two years and he knew about the Japanese and Chinese and Russians and some backwater Europe with its backwater socialism—whatever the fuck that meant—but he had never seen any of that, not even on TV. So, he sat there and listened to Takemura ever more at ease. 

V liked this. But he also knew his like is misplaced, wrong. Or was it Johnny? The cynic soldier Johnny, the terrorist Johnny? V knew the line was fading between them, the realization terrified him anew with every instance. Fading from his own body, his own mind… Till Johnny takes his place on the sofa, in the city to run after she-whores and get shitfaced. Then he dies. 

He bashed the glass down onto the table with a force. No more drinking, not for now. Excessive drinking was Johnny’s thing. V was just confused, scared, and alone. Takemura watched him silently from the other end of the sofa with a something in his gaze that wasn’t pity but wasn’t too far from that. V swallowed. “Thanks for picking me up,” he said. 

“You didn’t need me though.” 

Anger rose in V with a helplessness and vulnerability he detested. “No. But you came anyway.” 

“True.” 

Silence again and V  peered into the other’s eyes,  searched for the most minuscule shift of expression .  “You think I’m digging my own grave.” 

“You tried to steal from  A rasaka.” 

“And I almost pulled it off.” 

“Almost meaning this?” Takemura asked. Don’t judge me, V almost said then didn’t. Just like on the roof with the  bakeneko when Takemura accused V of judging him for working for Arasaka and V answered he wasn’t. Takemura’s answer would be the same now; he wasn’t judging—and both of their answers would be close enough to the truth. 

Takemura said he at least hadn’t chosen the easy way out of Chiba-11, but fuck him if he thought living like  this, as V did, was any easier. Or  maybe it was. Or  maybe it was difficult in a  choose - your - hard kind  of way and life  sucked hard on every level. V looked away.

“ Thief, ”  t he  accented voice sounded in the silence with slight humor and  fondness,  “ w e will solve this.” 

Yeah, but solve what? What could be the endgame here? Corporations weren’t people  to just beat shit down on them  and V’s death would change nothing. 

“Shower in there if you are interested,” he said instead. 

Takemura was, and he went. V magicked some clothes for him for the night, then throw out the boxes of the food, put away the glasses, and just sat there listening to the shower, staring at the lights of the city, thinking about… everything, kind of. The automatic lights turned off and the light of the city colored the room purple and blue. The voices from outside were just a rumble in the distance. 

Takemura came back silently, hair loose and wet, sporting the clothes V gave him. V caught himself staring and thinking many-many things at once. He turned. They exchanged places  wordlessly and V emptied his mind forcefully under the shower, pressed his forehead against the warm tiles under the warm- ish water. 

Fuck it, he thought into the void. Fuck it. The situation. The whole burning and reaching where he shouldn’t. Fuck  Arasaka , fuck the end of his life, fuck the shard, fuck some one else’s fights, fuck… He breathed hard, then he calmed. When he stepped out of the bathroom the lights were off again, Takemura sat on the sofa just like V did a few minutes ago, his face purple and blue, silver eyes turning from the window to settle on V. 

Silence. 

V crossed the space, sat beside him, close this time, close enough for their legs to meet and shoulders to brush. He took  Takemura ’s wrist in his hand, felt the steady but quickened heartbeat, the soft skin on the outside, and some implants on the inside, just like in V’s hand.  A leg pressed against  his . V felt nauseous . They watched the lights of the  city . Neither of them  spoke and neither of them pulled away. 

“Come!” V  stood eventually and the motion would've made him pull on the arm if the other hesitated to follow but Takemura didn’t. He rose with V, circled the desk, crawled in bed with him accepting the pillow and the blanket offered. They lie there still, motionless in the purple-blue darkness, listening to the noises outside and the breaths inside. The silver eyes stared back at V calmly from an arm’s reach away. 

V remembered what he said about expectations, but seeing that calm gaze resting on him, glowing the slightest in the not-really-dark, lying on the soft-enough bed. A real bed. And Takemura was on board—not much mental exercise to realize that one. Whatever was between them; plain trust, friendship, honor; there was something. A link in V’s life where no link was  before, and V  cra ved it like he  craved  air . Tentatively,  he reached out and Takemura didn’t move, didn’t even blink an extra, just let V’s fingers land on his cheeks, caress the warm skin, the beard. Takemura closed his eyes and V’s heart  beat in his fingertips. 

He gave no fuck about bad and good ideas. He didn’t give a fuck about how Johnny despised this man. So, when Takemura’s touch landed on his arm pulling V in just the slightest at the same  time those silver eyes opened up again V leaned in—and the world flickered. 

“Shit! No! Fuck!” he jumped out of bed, terrified, angry, disappointed, feeling sick right down to the core, rummaged through his clothes and jackets in a hurry like a madman. 

“V.” 

“ Johnny’s here!  My pills!” 

A strong hand grabbed him, placed the container in his hand and V stopped, embarrassed, facing the door, shaking a pill into his hand, watching it roll around in his palm. Johnny wasn’t an entirely unwelcomed companion most of the time, but V wouldn’t let him surface here and now… Except Johnny was nowhere, he made a fool of himself in front of Takemura. 

A  gentle  hand was laid on his back. “V.” 

He swallowed the pills and felt like a traitor. Wrong. Despicable. Made the wrong fucking decision. The wrong fucking choices. He was sick of himself. Sick of… 

The hand stayed on his back patiently. “Sorry,” V said. “I promised you sleep and I’m fucking it up. “ 

“No. You are fine.” And this time V was the one being led, pulled down to the mattress, close, into the warmth and scent of another body. He pushed even closer,  rested his head on Takemura’s arm,  hid his face in his chest,  felt the heartbeat, the fingers caressing his arm,  but also felt the alien presence in his body even with the pill. 

He wanted to apologize again for the mess he caused, but lips pressed against his forehead, a breath caressed his skin. “Sleep, V, it will be over soon. And call me! You can call me.”


	2. Chapter 2

V argued Johnny and argued and argued and argued  continuously,  at this point purely for the sake of argument. Like a broken record, like running the same circles over and over. V was not pissed enough, aware enough, didn’t hate enough on corporations and inequities, wasn’t mad with  fury for the slums, and for wars and for his own life—and Johnny was pissed.

V's new, post-heist cultivated social awareness was closer to Takemura’s ‘there is good in this but you can’t help everyone'. He had seen the  corp -world through his brother and while Johnny insisted there  was no freedom in that, V reminded the other of that there  was no freedom in living one day at a time either just as insistently. Not anyone can shit on the world like a punk-rock star but understanding that part was beyond Johnny.

So, the animosity between them reached new heights and grew far beyond philosophical differences as well. Johnny betrayed him. V gave him control and Johnny fucked up his body, did things with V’s parts V felt sick of; suffered disgust so thick it woke him at night and raised the bile in his throat. Because he is such a choir girl, Johnny jeered at him, sn innocent little flower going around killing people for money. 

V was fed up. Fed up with the drugs, the alcohol, the cigarettes, the tattoos, the whores, the sex he wasn’t willing to have but hesitated to call rape, with the preaching of Arasaka, Arasaka, Arasaka… No. Enough. Not because Johnny was wrong but because he was a fucking hypocrite obsessed with the war and the shit he’s been through, but did absolutely fucking nothing besides playing shitty punk in dirty garages for a handful of people. To reach people, he insisted, yes. And those reached people also did absolutely fucking nothing. 

Johnny hated and destructed with passion but only delivered those bombs, drugged out of his mind, mind you, when Arasaka took his  fucktoy and then passed his hurt ego as revolution.

Johnny insisted he loved Alt. V disagreed. So did Alt.

V tried to call Takemura before and after he gave up control of his body; half-dead from alcohol poisoning in an abandoned hotel at Pacifica of all things, but the line didn’t connect just as any other fucking line never connected to Goro Takemura  after the parade. V tried and failed relentlessly. He looked, and paid people to look, and once he dared to go back to the building even, but nothing. Johnny insisted Takemura died. V insisted Johnny can fuck himself.

Looking back, giving up control to Johnny in that situation was a bad idea—except V knew pretty damn well it’s the worst fucking idea he could possibly act on right at the exact moment he was about to act on it. The smartest dumb guy around, really; but he was on edge, waited for Takemura at the motel for days and the man never showed, never called, while Johnny was insistent, persuasive and they needed to find Adam fucking Smasher either way, so might as well, V thought, then it turned out to be a might as well not because Rogue too can be fucking useless when she wants to be.

So, V was back doing gigs and being pissed off, disgusted and worried, waiting for Hanako  Arasaka's invitation and hoping for the best.

Today, he found the target he was looking for on  a desk in the cellar. The body of said target at least, butchered, implants missing. The wall and the  ground were drenched in  blood with empty buckets and  clothes lying around.  Some h alf-eaten food  was  left  on the counter  by a busy, hungry butcher.

V was way past getting his stomach twisted around something like this. More often than not, he found his targets in similar states be they poor or rich, important or nobodies. An implant was an implant and a body was flesh on the market. He compared the photo sent by Dakota to the man on the table. The eyes were missing, some limbs, the whole inner parts of the stomach; probably the kidneys and the liver. Testicles? Or was that just for fun?

Never mind that, it was the man he was looking for, a good five-eight years older than him with a once handsome face, fine-groomed, graying hair, remnants of once-elegant clothing with intricate, elegant tattoos. He reminded V of Takemura, but nowadays every dead body reminded V of Takemura, of that night Arasaka broke the doors and walls down on them after the parade. V’s hand shook and he fisted them. Counted to ten but not really. Took a deep breath.

“You think he was a fag too?” Johnny asked from beside him nodding toward the man on the table. V felt the disgust rising from the pit of his stomach anew.

“Shut it Johnny…”

“I mean look at him!” V looked at Johnny instead with all the tired, burning anger he felt. The arch hetero fuckboy in his head messing with him. V felt worse the more and more the line dissolved between them. Felt alien, misplaced, wrong in his own body.  Dirty and disgusting.  Feeling Alt’s lips on his cock, fucking in that nightclub, fingers diving deep in wet pussy in a speeding car of all things, causing an accident—because of course Johnny dead fucking  Silverhand was causing an accident and walking away grinning. Who the fuck would assume otherwise? Then the audacity of Johnny claiming he at least showed V some real sex in his life.

V considered sending a bullet through the motherfucker’s head—no matter how stupid that was—even if Johnny’s spite admittedly wasn’t against V’s person but his life choices.

The problem wasn’t even the girls. Okay, the girls too. Definitely. But V also had this urge to not let people he didn't trust and know anywhere near his body. Johnny just raped those ideas. V’s whole being. He also couldn’t forget how the engram acted up with Takemura in his bed—and he clenched his jaw on the memory and in worry.

Takemura told V to call him. Well, good fucking riddance.

“Kerry’s fag too, gave him shit all the time?” he shook his head. “Who am I kidding, fifty years and he's still recovering.”

“Fuck you, V!” Johnny bristled under the low blow. Kerry was the only one alive Johnny had any real strings and ties to. “You know, your  corpo might look exactly like this at the moment.”

V popped a pill. 

Johnny had no malice, V reminded himself the umpteenth time. None, or at least most, of what Johnny did to him wasn’t to hurt on purpose. V, on the other hand, could give people real shit if he wanted to.

Now, alone and in the familiar silence, V took a last good look at the body, swept the building once more, katana in hand, just to be sure no other victim was closed up somewhere and no other scavenger crawled back inside aside of the dead ones in the living room. Then he left.

The night was setting over the warehouses, the orange light colored the rubbish around red and gray. Long shadows, warm night, thunderclouds, Jackie’s bike in front of the house because the Kusanagi was with Takemura and… Goddamn Goro… Goddamn… He sat on the stairs, sent a message to Dakota about the fate of her client then just sat there wondering if he killed Takemura like he’d killed Jackie. Killing allies by being loyal. Not once tried he talk down Jackie. Not once tried he talk down Goro. And that fucking parade, how the walls just exploded on them in a second. Like in slow motion but he couldn’t do a thing. 

Just boom.

Thunder growled in the distance and V stood, not about to spend a downpour in a house with dead bodies when a message pinged. He assumed it was Dakota’s answer but it said: I’m alive.

God fucking dammit! The range of emotion whacking through his body was a mess of a billion things but there was relief in it and anger, more relief, no, more anger or maybe the other way around instead, but also a choking warm feeling in his chest that made him clench and re-clench his fist, punch the pillar of the patio so hard his arm numbed. He couldn’t deal with it, so he paced and cursed and considered tearing his link out and hurling it through the field.

Days, he typed, then reconsidered with a fuck it and called the new link. One ring, two…

“V.”

“Days, you asshole! Days!

“I  wrote as soon as it was safe.”

“Bullshit! A text? Is it that  dangerous ? I’m not feeding cockroaches in a canal—send. Arasaka is not fucking the living soul out of me—send. See? What did you think?! Just gone, poof, no word, no anything with all Arasaka in your tail! The fuck, Goro?!” He slumped back down to the stairs, buried his face into his palm. The last time they’ve seen each other they’ve just escaped the old building stormed by Arasaka—after kidnapping Hanako Arasaka of all people—V more out of his mind than in, battling Johnny, a blackout, armed forces, Takemura bleeding badly, shots fired,  netrunners , and Takemura grabbed him, looked at him, looked at his state.

The worry and authority in those silver eyes. A force of nature in his element. Gods…

V had to be a sore sight. In his mind’s  eyes, he could see the determination in Takemura’s eyes even now, the gears in  the man’s head going a mile a  second, getting to the conclusion that they have to go separate ways to be safe, urges  V to go but he doesn’t talk to V, but to Johnny. V grabs him in return and tells Takemura to take the bike. That was definitely V because Johnny wouldn’t give a fuck. Then blackout.

Now, V was staring at Jackie’s deep blue bike, his heart hammer ed fast but the world seem ed all too slow on the comedown of the adrenalin spike. The sky darkened and thundered as the clouds neared and there was a knot in his throat and a weight in his stomach. “Are you alright at least?” he asked.

“I am.”

“You have been  shot again .”

“It is taken care of.” V shut his eyes, let out a deep breath. “I had to arrange some issues,” he heard through the line. Some issues, right, V almost repeated then didn’t. He knew the drill: secure place, secure line, get shit done to escape. V knew. Or knows now, but it’s hard to keep knowing with no news whatsoever and a voice in his head arguing the worst-case scenario. Arguing he will be better off without Takemura. Arguing he is lucky the other is dead.

“Where are you?” V asked. “I’m going there.”

“Someplace secure. This has to be enough. You can’t come here and I won’t go to you, it is not safe.”

“Less safe than kidnapping the Arasaka heiress?”

“We undertook a hard task and came out victorious.” I’m known to be impulsive sometimes, Takemura deadpanned once. V's been baffled, not doubted the statement for a second, but baffled all the same, intrigued even more than a little by the prospect of an impulsive Takemura. But incapacitating the Hanako Arasaka and stealing her from her own parade… Damn that man had balls. And a death wish.

“It shouldn’t have worked. By every possible measure, this not-the-plan of yours should’ve failed and we should’ve died a terrible death.”

“Yet you came when I called.” Not calm, not matter of fact- ly , not really impressed, but… puzzled.

The memory of the anxiety clenched V’s throat, the silent prayer and cursing, the worry of not being on time, the need to get there lying flat on the back of the Kusanagi, bolting through the city. “Did you really expect otherwise?”

An exhale at the other end. “No. ...I don’t know.”

V remembered how Takemura collapsed by the car at Vik’s clinic after saving his life twice by that time, how terribly much blood there was on the pavement, how  the man looked leaning on the railing by the  river talking about his implants and waiting f o r  Oda , how he opened up about his life to V on the roof, how he was respectful and so unexpectedly kind sometimes, how terrifying he was when he fought. How he saved Hanako with his own body then kept back a squad of Arasaka soldiers alone and walked away on his own two feet.

How different it could’ve turned out if V didn’t get there in time. If he didn’t go back for him.

“We are in this together, aren’t we? In this Arasaka shit. Allies and shit. Friends and shit but fuck knows, right?” V got the urge  to smoke and he swallowed it. “I promised. I delivered. I…” Gods… all the bonds and ties and messages, and phone calls, the respect, the loyalty, the honor, the two-hour drive out to the desert and that night where nothing really happened in the end. “I promised.”

V’s head felt heavy and he stared at the bike. There was silence on the other side, breaths, a chair squeaking. The sky darkened even more, the clouds menaced further and the wind woke, carried the sharp sand. The streets were empty—V checked again and again, was on the constant lookout for anything Arasaka—but nothing. The silence deepened, carried a meaning V couldn’t really solve without  looking t he man  in the eye. And he had enough. “Don’t push me away now, tell me where you are!”

“No.”

“Are you working for Hanako at least? Or still running?”

“We will see.” 

Johnny scorned in disgust in V’s mind. Of course, Takemura was going back at the first opportunity. A lapdog never strays far from the hand which feeds it, far from the boots it licks. Takemura was a slave, sick in the head, an empty carcass, a soulless puppet of a human being. V drowned the thoughts but couldn’t entirely kill them.

Instead, he told Takemura about Hanako’s visit—carefully leaving out the part where he was sitting on the bed drifting in and out of the darkness, weapon pointed at the door, Johnny urging him to shoot anyone and everyone, insisting the other man is dead and done for. V’s seen Takemura fight, but… well, Johnny was in his head. 

They compared notes for a time, went over everything Hanako told V. Takemura sounded pleased and hopeful, V was anything but. There wasn’t a thing in the world he trusted less than Arasaka. Or was that Johnny? V hardly knew what to believe anymore, who he was, what he wanted or needed. 

The rain arrived at some point and the conversation quieted. It poured like a curtain, V slid back toward the wall under the roof of the patio, pulled his legs up to not get them wet, stared at the deep blue bike now dripping. Felt the Kusanagi under his palm as he speeded through the city escaping the parade, trying desperately to outrun the bullets, drones and soldiers. Disappearing before they could see him, reaching the building before anyone could tail him.

Nobody saw V, nobody knew about him since the theft, Takemura made sure, covered every damn track, gave back as much of V’s life as he was able. V watched the rain, listened to the breaths at the other end of the line, leaned his head back against the wall.

“How are you holding up?” Takemura asked quietly.

“Peachy. Never been better. Also, worse with every day.” It thundered and for a long time there was no answer, the chances were laid out before plain and simple. V will go see Hanako, then maybe magic happens—or a bullet. There was a security in that, in a sure end.

“This storm may take long, Thief,” Takemura said eventually and there was something in that  low voice that made V look back out to the rain, toward the city, register the longing in the voice and in his own chest. Night fell slowly, all lights were gone, thr temperature dropped and there were no street lights here to keep company. “Go, find a place to sleep!”

“There are dead people inside.” V heard the raised eyebrow and he grinned. “One of us has to work.”

Takemura scoffed and V smiled, got up, crossed the rooms paying no attention to the bodies, up to the second floor where the bedrooms were located. Recently used, reasonably clear, he slumped down onto the bed under the diagonal roof. The ceiling was no more than a painted attic roof with no insulation whatsoever be that thermal or sound. The rain beat down onto the plastic-like someone was shooting at it, deafening, like the world was about to collapse.

V closed his eyes but it made little to no difference in the dark. He smelled dust, and maybe blood but mostly just dust in the familiar, vapid stench of the rain. The beating of the storm sounded unnervingly similar to the boom and rumble of the walls collapsing in their hideout, Arasaka forces pushing through, a motherfucking army, like he got trapped at that moment, like a misplaced purgatory. Takemura shielding Hanako, then the ground collapsing under V as the whole building crippled and…

The pain. Quite awful pain that, falling through the roof onto the rubble. He hit his head, Johnny appeared, woke him, dragged him through the room, toward the door, the yet empty staircase and toward the outside, and V was battling a blackout, Johnny’s takeover, the pain, the confusion, the dawning dread. Automatic weapons and  bullets  tore the walls, instincts  tried to take over but battling wills  froze him into a stand. Takemura was upstairs. Johnny dragged him, V grabbed the doorway, set his foot. No. Johnny insisted on leaving. Urged. Shouted. No, bellowed. He is dead. He is fucking dead, and V shouted back an ‘over my dead fucking body’.

Over my dead fucking body.

He staggered back into the gunfight, toward the lights, pushed through the hole on the wall then forward, through the armored Arasaka forces with a revolver and a katana, from cover to cover, desperately, coldblooded in the face of danger; up the stairs, hearing the shots, the noises, hearing Takemura shouting at him just like Johnny did, to  not come and die there with him. V ignored him, ignored him so hard like he hadn’t ignored anyone ever since Jackie. He wasn’t leaving that building alone. And he didn’t.

Now, he let out a deep breath, listened to the presence at the other side, remembered the victory that filled him when he grabbed the man’s arm in that hellhole and Takemura was alive. “Does it rain where you are?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you see?”

“I’m not falling for that trick.”

V laughed softly. “Never thought you would… I just… It’s just…” I wish you here. He definitely didn’t say that. Instead, he swallowed and there was a low voice of understanding and agreement on the other side. Then silence, always these long silences between them, like this, when they were both reluctant to disconnect and even more reluctant to speak.

“You saved my life,” Takemura said over the rain. “I thank you, but it was foolish.”

Yes, V wanted to say, and even said it aloud this time. “Yes.” Foolish. This decision will kill V one way or another, will bite him in the ass, doom him just as much as steeling the chip doomed him. And V was, well, not okay with that, because he really wasn’t, but on the other hand, it was what it was. A path he chose. His own voice echoed in his head, and Johnny’s words, the answer. Over my dead fucking body. Someone else’s fight and ties and bonds…

“When you slept at my place,” V said into the darkness, “I really regret not going through with that kiss. …I regret not waking you in the morning.” 

Takemura lied beside him, on his stomach, hands under his pillow, strong back relaxed, hair loose, the implants along his spine and lower back a work of art. V stared but didn’t touch, wasn’t about to be creepy on a friend in his bed. But he wanted, oh so he wanted to plant a kiss to the warm skin, push close to wake the other with his own body. He wanted even more  for Takemura to rest safely. So, he let the other sleep, ordered cafe, breakfast, left a note, and went to work. When he arrived back late at night there were folded clothes and a thank you note waiting for him.

“When I told you, I don’t want to fuck you?” he carried on. “That wasn’t entirely true either.  … I thought you  dead. ”

“V…” Takemura’s voice was deeper and oh gods, V thought, oh gods.  There was d arkness, the rumble of the rain, and that voice running down his spine making V’s hand crawl onto his stomach, fist the clothes, cold thumb reaching skin.

V’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I would fuck you so bad if you were here. Good, I mean. So…”

“Deep breaths, V!” Deep, stern voice and V obeyed. Ragged, deep  breaths escaped  his chest , his palm  pressed  flat on his stomach not slipping under the waist, but his body  burned  hot and hard, naked skin rubb ed on the coarse sheet where the shirt slipped up. V needed this, needed so much more but he could have only this. 

“You could’ve woken me,” Takemura said.

V fisted the sheet, fingers d u g  into the  flesh of his stomach . “I’m here now.”

A hum  resonated  in the darkness, the beating of the  rain was a  violent, deafening background . “Then show me! Touch yourself!” V did in an instant, slipped a hand under the waistband, pushed the trousers down, wrapped his fingers around his free cock, jerked in synchrony with his breat hs . “Slower,  T hief. Slower…” voice deep, sinful, aroused but so infuriatingly calm and collected. “Imagine it's my hand! Slow and hard, all the way. Close your eyes, let me touch you!”

V did, he imagined the mattress pushing down next to him under the weight of the other body, the silver eyes glowing down at him, a hand working between his legs, so infuriatingly slow, and so infuriatingly attentive and steady. V whined, opened his legs as far as he could with his pants on, slowed and deepened his movements as he slowed and deepened his breaths.

“Yes, like that. You are doing great,” the voice breathed in his air. “Let it out! Let me hear you.” V  couldn’t keep silent if he tried . “I would kiss you; clamp your hands above your head, keep you down while I eat your lips, your neck… Slow, Thief, easy…”

“I can’t…” He kept his moves back with effort, panting. He wanted it bad, the vice-like grip on his wrist, the body above; wanted to open up for the kiss, push back, feel it, devour it, move his head to the side to give access to his body, wanted to grab and pull and push back and guide and fasten and make.

“ Sh … easy!” A rough whisper. And V could imagine the hands and lips on his body, give his mind up to Takemura’s voice but it wasn’t enough, so very much not enough but oh so very much wanted. “Keep your legs apart, let me there! Let me see!”

“Let me more!”

“Faster? Rougher? Just a little rougher to show you’re alive?”

V kept his lips pressed tight to not whine but whined anyway, body hot, crying out for relief of that need, want, dread, worry and that very fucking different need in the pit of his stomach chaining him to this man. “I want you here… I want you.”

“I know, Thief.” The voice was just as breathless and bothered as his own, just as hungry. “I know. You want to touch me. Keep me in your hand, jerk off us both while I kiss you. Touch you. You would do good. Even better with my fingers inside you deep, fucking you…”

V’s body reacted to the words with a wrench; the phantom touch so real for just a second he shuddered, cried out, whimpered, and begged.

“You want me pushing it in, filling you out, fucking you so hard you can’t walk straight.”

Fuck yes, please, V climaxed after a few additional strokes, with a ragged breath and a muffled cry, biting down on his arm, hand working furiously between his legs driving out and down the orgasm. He heard the same quiet noises from the other side and he needed the other to be there, needed him as he needed air, to pull close, and kiss, and touch, and embrace, and comfort and do it again and fucking cuddle for fuck' sake, but at least just be there for one touch, for one kiss. 

No matter what he wanted though, he was alone, so he just lied there, silent, wiping his hand in the sheet and staring up to the ceiling in the darkness, angry. So fucking angry…

“V…” He couldn’t make himself answer. The storm battled the building just as hard as a few minutes ago. “V…” Takemura was worried. V swallowed.

“I’m here. I just… I…” Silence answer ed and V recognized that silence as the  same needy, frustrated one as his own.

Neither of them spoke for a long time and when Takemura did next, his voice was hard like steel. “I probably won’t be able to contact you in the near future.”

“You suck at pillow talk.” Now the remark would’ve been funny if the sentence leaving the older man’s lips wasn’t the one which actually did. “You are ditching me.”

“No. But I will have to go places you can’t follow, and I won’t get you killed this close to the help you need. Go talk to Hanako-san, decide what you want!” V couldn’t put a name on what he was feeling. Disappointment? Betrayal? Longing? Understanding? Worry? Gratitude? The bitterness of Johnny's ‘I told you so’? All. Maybe neither. It wasn’t worse than lying there alone.

Silence.

“Say something!”

“What? Do I have a say in this?”

“No. You don’t,” came the wry answer. “I’m sorry.”

V was sorry too. Also, painfully empty.

He didn’t have a say in the matter of their meeting, but Takemura probably didn’t have any either. Hanako found the ex-bodyguard, that much was clear, but if Arasaka would take him back, or, more importantly, would find his excuse for betraying them good enough, was a question not yet answered. One thing was for sure though; Takemura won’t run again—and he wasn’t letting V anywhere near to that part of the mess.

“I didn’t expect us to go this way when I texted you,” Takemura said eventually. V grinned bitterly on that voice, the puzzlement again. “But I’m…” He clearly didn’t know how to end the sentence. Glad? Satisfied? Happy? Disappointed? Neither. Also, all, a little.

“Yeah, me too,” V said. He let the sheet slip from his fist slowly, tried to keep the choking weight on his chest in check. “Will I see you again?”

“That’s not my decision.” Silence again and when Takemura continued, it was with a new tone, an urgency and caring V never witnessed so plainly before. “Look, V,” he said, “I know the voice in your head was killed by Arasaka. I know the lines are harder to draw with every day; but Hanako-san will help you if you help her. Whatever happens to me, don’t throw that help away for a terrorist! …Take care, Thief.”

After the line disconnected, even the silence felt empty, the rain angry and final, a battle no more but falling earth on a coffin. V must’ve said something in return to the goodbye but he couldn’t recall it for the life of his. He fixed his clothes, sat up to the edge of the bed, was leaning on his knees not as much cursing as battling the sea of emotions and confusion in his chest. Johnny was present again, smoking leisurely, staring out of the window.

“So, that’s that for the Arasaka  fucktoy . Now, it's out of your system maybe we can actually begin to solve our problems.”


	3. Chapter 3

Darkness really was an old friend at this point; a maze, one that swallowed him over and over again, kept him in a gentle but terrifying hold . Wh en V wasn’t numb to the core, drifting through strange dreams and memories, he run screaming, tried to break the hold desperately. Sometimes he managed and w o ke, sometimes he was too exhausted to even fear. Like now.

“What do you see in him?” a voice asked. V knew that voice, didn't like it particularly much, but some half-conscious depth of his  mind noted there was a not zero chance the owner of the voice won’t kill him. Survival instinct satisfied , he slumped back to the half-comatose state where his maze-bound mind dragged him to.

“He is capable.” Now this voice poked the darkness a different way. “Strong. Honorable. Smart. Funny.”

“Funny?” the other voice doubted.

“Loyal.”

“I can get you a puppy.” Oda—V realized who the voice belonged to and his mind’s eye conjured a terrible form with an even more terrible battle in the abandoned building with the cherry blossoms flying around. There was no way of winning that fight. No way to win against that force… An elite Arasaka soldier. A walking, talking weapon.

“Show me a puppy that beats you! And Smasher,” the other voice said. Adam fucking Smasher, gods… another fight, revenge for Johnny, out of V’s fucking mind, more instinct and desperation than skill. The first battle with Takemura actually at V’s side—and goddamn that man fighting—covering, and guiding and standing up against that war machine of a man, two heads taller and three times the size of Takemura, but his friend holding his own, pushing back, overcoming that monstrous form, giving V openings. His mind dragged V back into that moment, to the red haze and adrenalin stench of the battle, where there was only the two of them.

Oda again. “ Luck,  my underestimation, and Smasher would’ve eaten him without you. But I admit, yes,  he may has qualities. ” The half-conscious depth of V’s psyche was pleased then shut  down , unable to maintain the strength needed to keep his mind on the surface.

Maybe it was an effect of the drugs pumped into his system. Arasaka doctors sending him down into slumber on purpose, making him sleep through the rest of his life. A cruel fate. A joke. Revenge. Pure evil. The exact thing Johnny warned him  about . Arasaka won’t just kill him but use him like he was not more than an object. The conscious part of V’s psyche despised this: the slumber, the cruel, never-ending tests he failed gracelessly and pathetically every day, or at least from time to time, or not even that and he was just sleeping and dreaming in never-ending circles of torment.

There was nothing left for him but  this  t orment and mazes and tests, the pain, discomfort, and the fucked-up-ness of his mind. The black hole in his head breached by a handful of withering neurons making him hear colors and taste words, making watching the news on TV a harrowing experience. And what the news were actually saying… A myth. A wonder. A horror. An immortal Saburo Arasaka in his son’s body.

The sad thing was, V's had the choice to not end up here. He could’ve stormed Arasaka, could’ve given his mind up to Johnny, could’ve sent a bullet to his head but he called Hanako. The rage and disgust he felt for Arasaka were all-consuming at that point, Johnny intertwined so thickly with his mind the presence made his own self not more than a whim, an afterthought, and his hand shook and stomach twisted and it was into the second week of radio silence from Takemura… The trust between them faded in Johnny’s rage but hadn’t faded enough to make it like it never happened at all.

And when he arrived  to the bridge, to the point of no return, he  clung to his mind, forced his own hands,  made  the call and the call went. To Hanako Arasaka. Then  what’s left of  V ambled down the stairs, pills in his system but the doze not nearly sufficient anymore. Misty comforted him, read him her cards and V wondered on the devil and decided that yeah, it’s quite fucking fitting from quite many points of views. Then a car arrived, a door slammed, steps echoed and he recognized those  steps with a flutter in the pit of his hearth , then a door opened and a voice called out from behind him.

“V.”

The voice did things to his system. Like a wrench again, like a strong hand grabbed and squeezed the living hell out of him. He turned and looked at Takemura, now in that astonishing, blazing white, looking just as tired and  so much more  worried  than before,  but  just as confident and better, so much better and so much worse, and V was confused out of his mind. Misty was  taken aback by seeing the Arasaka emblem on Takemura’s clothes.  The feeling turned  in to d isappoint ment , quite vocal one of that , claiming V was betraying Jackie, betraying them all, but Jackie died because  they were arrogant and stupid, but V wasn’t arrogant or stupid anymore and Takemura was standing before him, searching him, his eyes, but not looking for Johnny but for V.

The sense of loss hit V hard with the sense of longing and a cry for  help from somewhere the deepest,  numbest, untouched part of his mind . He kept silent  though, with Johnny’s alien anger and disappointment burning in his mind like fire and Takemura standing in front of him like water. 

“You’re back there. Sold your soul,” V accused.

Takemura didn’t answer  but  contemplated him in silence. V was embarrassed, remembered the story of the Chiba-11 child washing his clothes in the river. How old? Six? Seven? Takemura ’s soul was already gone the moment some soldier pointed at him on the streets. Johnny wanted to kill this man, V wanted to hug him tight and protect him with his life. The clashing feelings and minds made him want to puke.

“You  decided  right,” the man said “ I’m here to bring you to Hanako-san.”

Right. Nobody else thought V decided right, not even V himself. Or was that Johnny? Why did everyone think he has to die, to go out with a blaze as a symbol of resistance against a system he wasn’t against? Not like Johnny, at least. Not as far and as bright as Johnny. Refusing to give up people for ideas . Refusing  to  kill thousands of people for his own  moment of glory.  Refusing to  paint the devil behind Arasaka.

“Thief.” 

V looked up into those worried, silver eyes and  the deep, untouched, stubborn part of him decided  on being the bad guy here. Being a  traitor to an idea  to stay loyal to a cause .

He still couldn’t move. The pills shut  Johnny  up but  he  never  was far enough anymore to not affect V’s thoughts and perception. So, Takemura was there, standing before him in that wonderful white and V was standing there too, not moving in, not reaching out,  unable to beg and  ask for help or comfort; and Takemura looked at him, standing also in place like he understood. Hellman realized something’s amiss as well, that the terrorist had taken control of too much of V’s mind, but Takemura trusted  V without pause, in a way even V didn’t trust himself. He thought that awfully reckless. And awfully kind.

So, with effort and pills , V went and fought beside Hanako’s forces, beside Takemura and his men, under his charge, facing wave after w ave of  corp soldiers and Adam Smasher.  V saw Yorinobu’s fall, the shattering of the change with that man, the break of a soul, and he sat there in the only calm moment the whole day, at a victory that didn’t feel like a victory at all. Then Hellman took him and the torment began.

Officially, he got help. V knew he was dying, though. Maybe he wasn’t in control of his own mind but he wasn’t stupid.

He emerged from his slumber at a noise, heard the TV in the background, saw the white equipment, the machines beeping, the computer now abandoned, so the treadmill, but he heard the noise of footsteps. He expected the doctor with the visor, the never-ending tests of his trapped, betrayed existence even if some pit of consciousness recognized the rhythm. Then a chair  squeaked and someone sat down behind him. V turned onto his back, his eyes met with Takemura’s silver, his chest tightened and for a long few moments he did just that: looked. To every worry, every change, every feature, expression of the man’s face and posture.

“How long?” he rasped.

“Two months.”

“Two months… They…” the emotions tightened V’s throat. “Nice of you to come by.”

“You were asleep every time I visited.” V believed him. Or at least he generally believed Takemura believed what he said. That their friendship and such meant enough for the other man once to… once. Two months ago, dammit, but V's mind got wrecked since then by Johnny, his own emotions, Arasaka and he wanted his clear mind back so badly. His self. His person. His ties and bonds, but V was wounded and wrecked and broken and all wrong now.

“These tests… I can’t… I’m…”

Takemura leaned forward in his chair. “They do everything they can. Your doctor and Hellman are masters of what they are doing.”

“She’s a scary bitch.”

Takemura made a face. “She lacks some… social skills. But they are the same people who helped Arasaka-sama.”

Saburo, goddamn… and Yorinobu. Defeated, fading from his own mind like V almost did… Like V was about, maybe. He could imagine  Yorinobu’s last, desperate, scared cry for help as his own, the man of change consumed by the past… He shuddered. It felt hard to breathe.

A hand was placed gently on his arm. The first human contact in two months and it shocked him how much he needed  it .

“Help me sit?”

Takemura stood and did. V held onto his arm, grunted as even this much exercise took a toll on his body. His hands stayed on the older man’s arm, dug weakly into the flesh. He wanted to latch onto the other, push close, just be held by another human, by him, but V was wrecked, his mind a mess. Scared. Desperate. And he wouldn’t ask like this. Wouldn’t take pity for his stupid decisions.

“So much said and done and I’m still dying. And Johnny…” his voice shook, tears stung but he didn’t let them fall.  He was defeated by h is own forcefully faced vulnerability, the insignificancy of his life, his person, his helplessness in the hands and will of something far stronger than him. The prospect of running the same, foggy circles of confusion and torture for the rest of his life.  He will s lip into slumber as Johnny did, will  be abandoned like Johnny had been.

He killed a  man . A sibling. No. He killed himself and his mind couldn’t process the fact he was dead and still walking. Such mindfuck this few last weeks… The almost complete loss of his self…

“Johnny…” He stared at the spot where his hand was digging into Takemura’s arm. “I betrayed him. Killed him. He was me, he was running and hating and angry and I gave him back to fucking Arasaka, I… I…”

“He had no business in your head.”

“He was me.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“Tell that to my head!”

A hand was placed carefully under his chin, guided his gaze upward to meet that silver. V’s stomach twisted with all the emotions and fear. “You are free of him,” Takemura said with such a low and confident voice V believed him for a second, and hope flickered in his chest for the first time since he realized he is failing the test ever more gradually. He pushed his forehead against Takemura’s chest to breathe freely, without the awful weight on his chest, just a few breaths in this hope and sanity before the man leaves with Arasaka to never be seen again.

The hand on V’s jaw slid to his nape and stayed there, thumb drawing soothing circles.

“Do you think he felt when they shredded him?” V asked into the clothes.

Takemura kept silent, thinking, his touch turning even more gentle, protective like the question touched on something personal, and in a  way,  V was grateful. “Hellman says it’s like a dream. He can’t feel pain there.”

“But could be aware of what’s happening. His death… Unavoidable. Inescapable.”

“If someone, he dug his own grave.”

V hid his cheeks into the clothes, closed his eyes under the touch and the scent, let the other man’s presence soothe his nerves, keep him together against his battling conscience. It was unnerving how he got to understand Johnny just now, when the engram was already away, when he wasn’t rebelling Johnny’s every word , desire, and thought anymore.

Now, V understood a little bit of Johnny  Silverhand . The thermal bombs, the rebellion, the fear, disgust and rage that chased him to drugs and drinking. Forced to face his own insignificance just like V was forced to, except Johnny burned too bright to ever accept being insignificant. And V remembered the street musician Johnny had shown him: the technique all wrong, but with something to tell. A cry inside. Now, that Johnny was dead V wished he had let him talk  more, e xplain himself better, make compromises, and then this part of V wouldn’t be missing. Not like this. 

V also realized his own numbness toward the state of the world ; how poisonous it was. His own missing spine. No. His own ability to find the positive in everything, his own dedication to fight his wars, one man at a time. Help and not destruct. Different in the core but facing the same kind of fucked up. Takemura was the only one in  V’s life who actually believed in something and was now holding him when everything had fallen apart.

“I can’t take this anymore,” V whispered into the clothes. “Take me away from here, please... Help me out of here just this one more time, Goro, I beg you.”

The circling stopped on his nape reluctantly, strong hands took hold of his shoulder and Takemura took half a step back to look into V’s eyes. The man must have had his implants back but looked just as  concerned and tired as before as he inspected every last one of V’s features and expression.

“There have been…  progress,” Takemura said. “ Not of the good kind, and knowing your doctor they thought it would be best delivered by someone you trust.”

“And that would be you.”

“Yes.” The man said m atter of fact- ly , not with a drop of doubt, and V was confused, messed up with his and Johnny’s paranoia proven right, at this place, but not free of the memories of the past times either. The struggle they went through together when there was no one to trust but each other.

“I guess.” There was the smallest smile in the corner  of  the other’s lips. V closed his eyes. Tired. Warm. But so fucking tired. It wasn’t the medication but his own fucking mind killing him. “Suppose I never had a chance me being a lowlife thief and you being… this.”

“This?”

“Infuriating.”

“Don’t joke now, this is serious!”

“I know, that’s why… but sure, it’s bad so I guess I know it anyway.”

A silence followed as long as a heartbeat but deep as a chasm while Takemura gathered his words. “Your connection to the engram run deeper than the doctors first thought. The separation was a success but a significant part of your mind was damaged. Too big part for the synthetic neurons to repair. You are dying but there are options.”

“Dying...” He knew that part, but he never really thought… never really accepted… “So, they can’t help me. They promised and… They did it with Saburo.”

“Yes, but for your own sake, they tried the conventional method first. Now, that it is not enough Hanako-san made an offer. They would make an engram of you.”

“An engram…” V echoed. “And stick me in some poor champ?”

“They will put you back into your own body. The doctors will disconnect the damaged part of your brain and your engram will rebuild your neural connections just like Johnny’s soul tried.”

V fell silent for a long time digesting that but was too out of it, too scattered and damaged to have any actual impact or thought on the matter. “And they can make it? My head is not…” he would’ve tapped his forehead if he had enough strength to raise an arm.

“Apparently, they can.”

“So what? I will see myself? Have two selves? Attack myself? Cough blood and have blackouts again, or be a schizophrenic maniac?”

“Theoretically, there shouldn’t be any major issue, but it hadn’t been tried  before, so no one can say for sure.”

So that’s why-V thought. To be an experiment, a rat in a maze they can poke and test and make run in the same useless circles believing it’s for a life he thinks precious but is anything but. Anger and desperation filled him toward everyone and everything. A big, final fuck you. A big, final giving up. He would do this no more: these tests, this… how they kept him like an animal.

“What’s the other option?”

“You walk away. Go back to Earth, have around six months to live, last of those in bed and in pain.” 

V fell silent again, gaze resting on Takemura’s clothes hardly seeing anything, thinking some rest and quiet is positively the best thing that can happen after all this. Going out on his own terms, isn’t that what he wanted? Some dignity? Some peace? A sure end? But then that voice called, “Thief…” and V looked up into the silver eyes. 

It touched him, that voice, evoked the many instances he’s heard it. It also infuriated him, how Takemura was sent here to play with V’s mind, and the man came, of course, to help, but was around anyway to be able to be asked and V was so used and broken… So fucking tired.

“Isn’t your job to not be friends with your boss’s enemies? Where is your honor now?”

Takemura’s eyes were hard like steel, inquisitive, watching V, searching him, expression carefully blank, so V didn’t have the slightest clue of what was going on inside. He didn’t have the mind to understand it now, to read and he felt blind, stupid, evil with the intent to hurt. To push. To damage like he was damaged.

“True,” Takemura said after some time. “But when were you the enemy?”

“I should’ve been, that was like my only job. To fight this.”

“Arasaka-sama?”

“All of you.”

“To achieve what?”

“Fuck knows, Goro… The fuck knows anything anymore!” V would’ve raised his voice, shaken his head if he had the strength. 

“You don’t believe Arasaka-sama cares for the state of the world around him but believe a terrorist did?” 

No, V didn’t think that. He didn’t think anything anymore, and he wanted to cry so badly, to get this whole mess, these fucked up emotions out of his system. Wanted to pull the other man back, hold him close and hide in his arms, let himself be shielded and protected because Takemura laughed in the face of danger and could do fucking anything and V once thought he himself is capable of just as much, and he was, but not now and this vulnerability, helplessness, and pain was killing him. He wasn’t letting the tears out though. Not here. Not now.

“ V …” Takemura stepped back toward him and V grabbed him, fisted his hands weakly in the clothes, pushed his forehead back against the chest while a hand brushed through his hair with care. He couldn’t say sorry, he just couldn’t.

“Would you walk with me?” V asked instead. “Can I take a walk at all or…?”

“This is a hospital, not a prison. I will get a wheelchair—”

“No, just… I can walk, see?” V hopped down from the bed and wobbled. Takemura grabbed his arm, steadied him and V was embarrassed and angry with himself. Takemura let him walk on his own as much as V was able, but the arm was always around, hovered at V’s back, brushed on the small of his back now and then accidentally and V wouldn’t’ve mind if it stayed there but wouldn’t ask.

The furthest they got was the end of the same corridor V’s room opened from. There were st erile, white walls on one side, space on the other. Earth. The first time he saw Earth with his own eyes, the second time he was away from Night City in all his life but putting one foot before the other occupied too much of his attention for there to be room  for any other thought .

His body gave up the fight at the end of the hallway and Takemura sat him down onto the wide windowsill. V said nothing just stared at his feet exhausted, embarrassed, confused, contemplating his own weak, degraded, useless body. Maybe one day he won’t have the strength even to draw in breath anymore, to wipe his own ass, to raise the weapon to his own head.

V let out a breath and Takemura sat down next to him, close enough to support some of V’s weight and they sat there in silence for minutes. Takemura’s hand took hold of V’s at some point and V squeezed back with all the strength and emotion he could muster but wasn’t sure the other c ould feel it at all. 

“Come, look at this view!” Takemura said as he  stood again after some time, facing the window. V tried a glance behind his back but couldn’t maintain the position. Takemura helped him get his legs up on the windowsill and turn toward Earth, sat behind V for the younger man to lean back against him. V did. He felt the breaths and heartbeat through the thin clothes. Strong and steady. A hand wrapped around V’s midsection, more to rest than to pull, but to keep as well and V laid his own hand onto the other's, palm to palm, finger to finger, let the fingers intertwine when it happened and he closed his eyes in the warmth and peace of the moment.

When he opened them, he saw Earth. The blue. The black of space. The majestic planet with so much shit on the surface. The ancient ball of dirt with the self-important jerks, immortal rich and cattle-like poor on the same pile of rubbish. He was too tired and worn out to think of change or wrong or inequity.

“Have you been up here before?” he asked Takemura.

“A handful of times,” V felt the answer reverberate through his body. “Some of my advanced implants and also, some injuries had to be repaired here.”

“Repaired…” V echoed. Like a machine. Takemura’s hand was warm though, V  felt the pulse beating in the man’s wrist. Strong and steady. “If I go  through with this,” V said, “with the engram, if It doesn’t work, or even if it does, they will keep me. Like this. Like… And there will be tests. And poking. They will put me away like an animal.”

“They want to help, V.”

“This is not helping!”

“But it is. It’s not their fault you are used to shady  ripperdocs patching you up with duct tape in an alley.”

“Now Vik patched you up too pretty nicely, so—”

“I didn’t mean Vik, obviously.”

V believed Takemura because he wanted to, even against his own experience. He chose to follow this main instead of Johnny after all. Not trusting Arasaka but trusting Saburo’s bodyguard. Fucked up. Like really fucked up and stupid. “And where will you be?”

“On an assignment back in Japan. With Arasaka-sama back, some issues need to be taken care of.”

“You're putting down a rebellion,” he accused but his hand never pulled back. He remembered how corps were seen on the streets of Night City, how he or his brother saw them, what Takemura shared with him about the inner workings. That famous other side of the coin. V was too tired for this.

“This particular issue is between corporations, but otherwise… yes. I do.” Takemura considered long of what he was about to say. “Some of you won’t appreciate that such a powerful tool is in a hand of a man with strong values. It could’ve been worse.”

“Or it could’ve been not done at all.”

“But life doesn’t work like that, V. You think Arasaka is the only one researching the technique? Just take Kang Tao Hellman run to. This step forward would’ve been made either way but now the control is in a hand of a man who will deal with it wisely.”

V remembered what Yorinobu told him about the fear of his father, how V feared the man even as a hologram in the Arasaka Tower, how the board members reacted to him appearing from the dead. “You have too much fate in him.”

“And you have too little.”

V stared at planet Earth through the window, felt Takemura behind his back, held the hand holding his, and deeply regretted never kissing him. Never loving him. Never being good enough for him, never standing tall and proud beside him except when fighting Smasher. Except when running back for him into the building. Except when there were only the two of them fighting side by side battles they shouldn’t have been able to win but won nevertheless. When Takemura lead an army and V lead right beside him.

V wished he had the chance to prove himself. As a partner. As a thief. A soldier. An infiltrator. He wished Takemura saw him as capable and worthy. Whished the man would want him, love him, need him, that he would want V to love him. But V was not capable or sane or just plain functional anymore. Johnny made sure. His own pride, arrogance, and stupidity made sure.

“So, I should just let them do whatever to me then? Be their lab rat?”

“You should live first.”

Right, V almost said watching their translucent reflection on the glass. His complexion pale from weakness, frame thin, skin and bone, limbs looking and feeling heavy. Takemura strong and beautiful behind him, watching the reflection too, their eyes meeting. V wished he could turn his head to reach those lips but was broken and exhausted, making effort just to keep his eyes open.

“Thief…”

V wondered if he is about to make  his last big mistake, wondered if this friendship will last for the rest of his life be that hours or decades. He wondered what comes next if he will fade more if his mind will survive or he will be reduced to a breathing potato on a bed. Wondered if he will be sane enough to be conscious, and wondered if Takemura will have the mercy to put a bullet through V's head if he fails at any of the aforementioned.

“What do I do then?”

“Sign here,” Takemura pulled a device from his coat.

“Sell my soul too?”

Takemura didn’t answer just offered him a pen. V took it and signed and that was that, another chance to those who’ve already played all his chances. Life wasn’t fair. Or maybe it was and V was an idiot. He wanted to ask Takemura if he will come back for him but the man was to be down there in Japan and V was to be stay here and be carried away to wherever the doctors saw fit. Stash him in  Mikoshi if they felt like it, throw him in space…

The despair pulled him down too strong, so he closed his eyes against the image on the other side of the glass, the exhaustion, fear, the mixture of feelings inside. He squeezed the hand holding his, pushed back into an embrace, hid his face in Takemura’s neck, held tight because if this was another goodbye, the last sane memory of his mind, he wanted it to last. Then even that strength faded as the slumber pulled on him, down and down and down…

He felt lips planting a kiss onto the top of his head then blackout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm 90% percent sure this solution was talked about in the game and, while I actually dig the ending, it frustrates the hell out of me.


	4. Chapter 4

V arrived back to his apartment three and a half months later. The tarot graffiti  at his door  was replaced with gang tags, nowhere near so intricate and spiritual as before, and with a 'Griff has big dick’ written all over the wall with giant letters, accompanied by a pictogram of said dick or said  Griff ,  kinda hard to tell really, with the dick’s tip—or Griff’s  head—ending right at the door of his home. V stared at it longer than the aesthetic value would’ve warranted with only two thoughts in mind: this city is filth and no one who has to write something like this has actually any big dick.

He wondered if he should be angry or disappointed but he was just… worn out. He stood in front of his place with silence in his mind, no confusion, no blackout, no voices, no Johnny; but he couldn’t shake the apathy and numbness from his bones either ever since he was back. It wasn’t like he longed back to the hospital, fuck no! Packing a bag and leaving through that door was one of, if not the most wonderful experience  of his life. Not a look back, not a word to his doctor, as his doctor said no words  to him  either except clearing him for leave, throwing the bag onto his shoulder, leaving through those hallways, stepping into the shuttle, leaving with that shuttle… Gods it felt wonderful! 

Looking into the mirror at the airport, breathing air, showing ID’s, being confident and himself once more. Standing steady with not a flicker, not an alien thought, not a cough, not a pain. V walked and he knew he is the one walking, he saw the cigarettes and bottles of alcohol and no craving reared its head. He was free and he was himself sleeping in a motel bed alone on his way home, hopping on a train with no danger of falling from the striking pain, arriving to Night City to face reality and the past year anew.

Maybe that was the problem, he thought standing there in the dirty hallway with people staring at him.

At the border of the city, he called  Delamain , who was as excited to see him as an AI can be. They chatted, and V froze only for a second when they passed the place where Takemura dragged him out the crashed vehicle and they lie half-dead on the sidewalk… The events of the past year played in his mind and he wondered if he should  apologize to Wakako or go back to Japantown and just… He stared out of the window and the whole city felt just so empty. The Arasaka Tower rose over the other buildings in the distance with the  Arasakas back in Japan and he didn’t really felt  anger anymore just unease. An elusive sadness towering behind the joy of being alive.

Something changed while he was away. Or rather he changed in a way that had nothing to do with the engram. He saw and experienced things far beyond his life. Took part in events and occurrences that normally would’ve played over his head, things which would've affected him would ’ve ma de him angry and outrageous but would ’ve  pass ed without him ever really understanding the why-s and how-s.  Instead, it seemed l ike the world had opened up around him and now, and when he was back where he started, it felt lacking in comparison.

He tried to get back at it, like nothing happened, really. Spent some days at Vik’s place to get back on his feet and to explain the story, went after some old fixers and did some gigs, found some bodies, saved some, killed some but the pride in his work was gone. Saving the world one man at a time gave his life meaning once, but now he saw the scale of the world turning, he saw the gears in motion and wondered how could anyone ever thought people like Griff with a big dick can change the world.

How small and, all things considered, meaningless his world had been… How fucked up it was how the people on the streets of Night City spit on people having a stable job and income at the corporations. How Hellman, his doctor, or Takemura were on the top of their game but were considered thrash because… Why? Because the only worthy lifestyle in Night City was occupational starving, stealing from those who actually did something, and wreaking havoc with gangs.

Such a bitter society. Such a fucked up system. He thought about Chiba-11 and the slums of his own city…

V listened to the news obsessively, the snippets about Saburo Arasaka and the  Arasakas in general which was old news at that point, after three and a half months in a world where the attention span was measured in hours, and not really talked about anymore except by the conspiracy theorists and drunk, bitter people in bars and diners. V visited such a diner on the second day of his arrival, heard the usual speech about how Arasaka is bad and wrong and  Militech will save them while they are just as wrong, and babbling about how this tech was already used before and their leaders are not who they seem to be but the conversation was dumb, so painfully dumb, shallow and infuriating V hurled his glass through the room and started a fistfight that ended with the diner on fire and with him on the ground, nursing yet another broken nose.

The people didn’t know what they were facing despite it had been all over the news before. They didn’t know what it entailed being pushed from their own bodies, how much Yorinobu had to suffer, what played behind closed doors,  how Arasaka was a strong and terrifyingly efficient force in the hands of a terrifying and immortal man. V couldn’t be not astonished at least a bit, just a little bit awed. They saved his life, after all, Arasaka did the unthinkable.

He sat on the sidewalk in the same state he was in when he met Jackie and  kinda in the same state he was in when Takemura pulled him from the crashed vehicle. Like if V needed a good beating to set his life straight from time to time. He missed Jackie badly, just as he missed Takemura, but Jackie was dead for good while Takemura was just away. V stared at the name in his phone, the long line of phone calls and messages they exchanged in the hospital. Takemura asked V to call when he gets home but V didn’t. Night City was bleak and wrong enough without reminding himself that the other is not there anymore either.

His feelings for Takemura… But no, V refused to go there, not to the long, honest conversations about anything and everything, not to the impromptu phone sex which just left him with more want and unsated feelings, not to the hospital when the man held him and asked him to live. That moment helped, saved V’s sanity through the darkest weeks after the procedure was started, and gods those weeks had been dark!

But V was home now, or at least this place had been home back at the day before it started to reek from Johnny’s cigarettes and his own abhorrence against the situation V founded himself in. 

He opened the door with the cardkey, faced the sofa Takemura and he had sat on that night, shrugged down his bag and jacket, and then just stood there at the middle having no idea how to connect back to his life. Feeling so fucking lost and aimless... V was older now, wiser than he had been a year ago and wanted… No, needed… No. No.

Instead, he looked around. The apartment was paid for eight months in advance--by some mysterious benefactor, Viktor told him, although both of them had a pretty good guess who that had been. Misty probably got over her grudge as well when she learned V got actually cured and the promise was kept because the place was tidied up, used cigarettes, empty bottles had been thrown out, and not a speck of dust anywhere.

V sat down then laid down onto the bed and just stared at the ceiling carefully not thinking of anything till he fell asleep.

His link pinged in the middle of the night and he opened his eyes to the purple-blue lights of the ads outside, to the muffled voices of the residents. He took a slow, hesitant look at the screen feeling the aversion in advance for any and everyone trying to crawl into his life in this hour. When Takemura’s name blinked on the screen his motion halted and hovered over the screen before he opened the message.

‘I will be in Night City in four days,’ the words said. V felt great many things and a weight on his chest was one of those. He didn’t reply, not right away at least, rather he stood to pace, to pour himself a soda which he didn’t drink, and turn on the TV which he didn’t listen to. He looked out of the wide window, saw a few shuttles crossing the sky. Armored shuttles with  Militech and Kang Tao emblems. His stomach dropped and he had an awful bad feeling.

The link pinged again. ‘Are you mad at me?’’

‘No,’ he answered, then silence. Of course, there was silence when texting, but this was a different kind of silence. A hesitancy. A weighing of choices. He watched the armored shuttles melting into the lights and gray of the city. Then he looked down to his phone, typed: ‘miss you'; hovered over send before deleting the message then he typed it again and sent it before he could change his mind again. ‘Miss you.’

The answer came immediately. ‘I can be there in three if you don’t mind if I arrive at night.’ Nothing for a few moments, then ‘We need to talk.’

V’s stomach dropped even more. Ever the good sign these four words. ‘Call me then!’

‘Can’t. Not now.’

‘Are you texting and fighting?’

‘Of course not. I’m hiding. Meet me at Viktor on Friday!’ V stared at the message and couldn’t help nor the smile nor the worry. 

The next three days passed in the same uncomfortable, wrong flurry as the previous three. Night city seemed more empty, anxious, somehow dazed with the gangs more violent and drugged out of their minds than ever before. The tone of some ads changed, the number of armored vehicles rose slightly but there was nothing exceptional in the news. Maybe it was V’s newfound paranoia. Maybe it was him seeing demons.

On the night of the third day, V was sitting on the couch at Viktor’s place. The  ripperdoc was already up in his rental sleeping but let V wait there. It was past eleven when V heard the familiar steps approaching, the iron screen sliding, and saw Takemura’s form appearing in the low light coming through the doorway.

“V,” the man greeted measuring him up, “What happened to your nose?”

“Broke a bit. I’m… settling back in, I guess.” The expression o n Takemura’s face  was  a mix of many things, most of them not pleasant but he made no remark nor on V nor on the city.

“You look better,” Takemura said.

“I feel fine. You were right, they made it work up there . Was a… was a bitch though.” Where bitch was an understatement by every measure. The first month after the chip was installed has been pure hell. Migraines, pain, his brain wrecked, his consciousness in and out of slumber and hallucinations, fear, his own self battling him like he'd battled Johnny. For a long time, he thought all was in vain and he will die anyway, wanted to just die finally and cursed Takemura every day for dragging him through this as well… Then things quieted down. 

There was a medical team helping him through the process this time, and it made all the difference. V was baffled about that one, about getting help from people like that. The moment he realized he was actually getting better filled him with relief so great, he broke down. He cried, slumped down into a corner with his doctor staring down at him dismayed and disapproving. That day he called Takemura for the first time after a long silence and they talked till V fell asleep.

This was the first time they really met again though and they just stood there staring at each other neither of them sure how to proceed and what goes and doesn’t go between them now. V had… V had not enough strength left to start their struggle again. 

“I missed you too, Thief,” Takemura said though, and every apprehension and doubt V took on in the past months alone was out of the window in instant. And in the next second, he was at that side of the room with a fuck it, wrapping the other man into the tightest embrace. Takemura’s arms closed around him as well, warm hand stroked through V’s hair, lips pressed down onto the side of his face as V hid his cheeks in the other man’s shoulder. He wanted to kiss  Takemura  so badly, drag him down to the couch, undress him, touch him, be touched, but as he raised his head to do just that, he noticed the distraction in Takemura’s gaze and he slowed down.

“What’s the matter?”

“...I came with a proposition and I would like you to hear me out.”

“Sound s serious.”

“It is serious. I need your help.”

“You have it,” V said immediately. Takemura arched a brow which meant ‘just like that?’. “You thought I would say no? Really, Goro? After everything?”

“You don’t know what I will ask.”

“But I know you, so it doesn’t really matter,” V shrugged and the older man looked at him with a gaze that burned. In a good way.

“I still wish you hear me out,” Takemura gestured toward the couch but V stopped him.

“If it’s that serious, there is a rooftop here for life-changing conversations.”

Takemura huffed but didn’t oppose anything as V took his hand and led him up through the staircase. They pulled their coats tighter around themselves as the cold of the outside hit them up on the roof. V pulled a big bowl to the  middle of the place, started a fire in it from the awful amount of paper lying around. Takemura watched him and approached the fire when V stood. The orange of the flames reflected in the silver eyes, a different kind of silver with his implants functioning again. He looked so damn good with that small smile in the corner of his lips V missed so badly.

The billboard fastened to the wall covered half of their view to the city but shielded them from the wind and the lights of the ads like that orange darkness was their own little word for a short time. V folded his arms on his chest hiding his fingers from the cold, watch ed the man beside him enjoying the fire. 

He recalled how energetic and almost amused Takemura was during the  storming  of the Arasaka Tower. How he was a different man when he was fighting, how fond of him V was all the time and he tried  to not t hink of Johnny and what Johnny would say about his life and his choices anymore very hard. V looked out toward the city to divert his thoughts at least for the moment. “This was the place Misty brought me to decide for my life. They gave me my pills and a gun,” he said.

Takemura glanced up at him, in his eyes clear what he thought about such offers and V allowed himself a warm smile. “I called Hanako from here,” V looked out toward the city and Takemura followed his gaze, t hey  watched the lights, the shuttles, the ads and for a second it felt like they were standing outside of all of that, looking at the world as outsiders.

“The processes the doctors learned from your case will help many,” Takemura said after a time.

“Yeah, Arasaka to be even richer.”

“And millions of people with neurodegenerative diseases and mental health problems.” V thought about that quite bitterly, how health was and will be always business. 

“You still have a grudge against Arasaka?” Takemura asked looking back at him and V had no immediate answer. 

“You remember when I told you I should’ve fought the system and you asked why?” Takemura nodded. “This is why. Because I am no resource or product. We here, on the streets, are no resource or product, not some faceless blobs. We are people. They can’t take away everything. Not out dignity. We don’t deserve to be treated like toys even if a corporation is helping us. And whatever you say, Chiba-11 is not the necessary evil but a tool for them to get loyal soldiers like you. The ones born up keep the slums down to keep the world off-balanced.”

“Saburo Arasaka came from a poor family, built up Arasaka from nothing with his own two hands. The  Peralez are running for mayor coming from the worst neighborhood of your city.”

“So what? Everything is fine, we others just never made it?”

“There wasn’t one time in history where everyone made it,” Takemura said looking back to the fire,  stretching his hands out toward the warmth. “Chiba-11 is older than Arasaka, older than the war or even the great  informatical advancement. The system may have flaws but these hadn't started and won’t end with Arasaka.” There was a silence there where Takemura contemplated his thoughts and when he talked again his tone was different. “I’m glad you didn’t choose death as your act of rebellion.” 

There was really nothing to be said to that and V stood on the roof, by the fire, so close to Takemura their shoulders were brushing, thinking about their lives, all of it, the journey they went on, the lessons they learned. Johnny, Arasaka, V, Takemura… looking at the world from such different point of views and they should’ve been enemies—and to be fair, they kind of had been—Johnny and Takemura, him and Johnny, but it never him and Takemura, because V loved this, these moments, these conversations, this closeness, this man who looked so free with a gun in his hand and kept V together during the worst part of his life. V pushed closer and a hand wrapped around his side, stroking calmly as he rested his head on the man’s shoulder.

“I don’t know the answers to your questions, V. But you and I… we won’t singlehandedly change the world for the better. We can only hope to not make it worse.”

“That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Yes. There will be—” Takemura trailed off to reconsider. “As I said, I need your help.”

“You have it.”

“I need you to work with me,” the man specified and that made a big fucking difference.

“Work with Arasaka.” V had an edge in his voice but didn’t pull back from the embrace. Takemura st iffened.

“Officially, I don’t work for Arasaka anymore either. I am a fugitive on the run for everyone who asks.”

“But?”

“I report directly to Arasaka-sama.” The conversation was interrupted by shuttles flying by close to their roof.  They sported no  emblems but  were equipped with  military-grade shields and turrets. Takemura followed them intently till they disappeared in the lights and jungle of the city and stared in their direction even after that. “There is a war brewing under the surface,” he said slowly, in a low voice, contemplating, “and it’s only time until it manifests in a full-blown conflict.”

“You are stopping a  corp war?”

“No. Or yes, when the opportunity presents itself, but the main objective is to prevent the synthetic soul technique to reach the black-market amidst of conflict.”

V stared at the fire thinking fuck this bullshit—and thought it with passion. He imagined a world at war where people hunted each other for better bodies, uploading themselves onto someone younger, fitter, smarter, souls wandering around. The same bullshit he saw in all his life, in all his gigs: gangs kidnapping people to cut off their implants but now they will wipe the self from their minds. Criminals hiding behind many faces, people with money hopping bodies. A new thing to kill for. Chaos. Madness. This shit shouldn’t have been  invented, but now that it was indeed done couldn't, for any cost, end up in the wrong hands. He understood that painfully well considering his own experience.

The night felt colder from the prospect, Takemura’s arm held steady on V’s side and  V straightened his back  in defiance . “If you say yes,” Takemura continued, “we will leave Night City together. We will be on the run, get assets out, information in, and play friends to very dangerous people across the globe with no backup. Your hand won’t always be clean. You probably can’t come back to this life again without being in danger and you will be working for Arasaka.“

“...And you need my help.”

“You can say no and I leave now, or in a few days. You have been through enough.”

“Not what I asked.”

Takemura let out a breath, his hand  lied steadily on V’s side. “I need help. And I want you. We worked well together, and…” They looked at each other, eyes meeting and V looked for that warmth and longing he had the chance to glimpse a few times before. The fire cast shadows on their faces and V’s pulse quickened as that slightly glowing silver gaze swept through him then rested in his eyes, as a hand stroked up on his arm. “I trust you,” Takemura said so low it mixed with the cracking of the fire.

“I trust you too,” V said and kissed him. It was cathartic in a way, their first kiss, up there on the abandoned roof, behind the billboard that shielded the light of the ads, so there was almost total darkness aside of the warmth, flicker, and orange of the fire. Cold hands and cold lips because it was so fucking cold outsides but so much power in a way of how Takemura stepped in the same time as V, held his head, and kissed V back just as enthusiastically as V kissed him. 

Pecks and slow, deep kisses, in mix and madness, like a barrier was broken, the barrier of the terror, frustration, confusion of the past year. Duties and priorities and conflicting morals and opposing sides and broken minds and Johnny and Arasaka and fucked up, broken worlds with Takemura getting by on duty and V not getting by with a bullet in his head, but V was grateful in a way he can’t change the past because he needed to grow up, needed to be here, needs to be out there. None of these, nothing mattered at that moment, just the kiss and their hands on each other, Takemura holding onto V’s clothes, keeping him close, V’s hand wrapped around the man’s neck.

V’s kisses strayed to Takemura’s cheeks and jaw and neck, his hands slid down to a chest, to under a jacket but not under the pullover because it was so fucking cold even by the fire and he hid his face in Takemura’s neck, kissing  and nuzzling there, finally, so fucking finally and couldn’t wipe the grin from his lips if he tried. Hands wrapped around him, stroked down his back, down to his ass and V made a noise, so embarrassingly loud in the silence, he laughed and kissed his man again.

He wanted to say so many things about the past year, about the bullshit they went through together, about the people they were, his thanks, confessions, promises he wasn’t ready to make. “Come back to my place,” he said instead leaning his forehead to the other man’s. “Just come with me for now.”

Takemura showed no protest, helped V put out the fire, let V lead him down through the dark staircase out the ground, to the alleys and the streets, waited till V closed the side-gate. The man was watching the city when V turned, clearly not appreciating the view but contemplating something, thoughts ambling around the towers. V put a hand onto his back and when Takemura turned back to him it was clear he wanted to say something, something he thought better of not saying, but there was a warmth in his eye that made V’s stomach flip.

V wasn’t going there, wouldn’t ask the when-s or why-s. He was quite sure their moment on the roof during their recon decided they will be friends and not just allies onward but everything after that… fuck knows. Fuck cares. And it felt so strange, standing there out on the streets, at a place V had seen a billi on times, crossed daily, looked up to those towers since he could see and it still felt like he saw them for the first time, not because Takemura was there but because V didn’t belong there anymore. Not really.

They crossed the streets, the familiar crowd always present around the  megabuildings . Some greeted him, some threw knowing glances. Everyone in everyone's business but also blind to each other’s problems. A strange, weird society. They climbed the stairs, stepped into the elevator but this time they stuck close, V leaning into Takemura, enjoying the hand around his body, then hallways and stair and hallways again and Takemura halted taking in the huge-ass graffiti about Griff’s big dick.

“This city is filth,” the  Japanese grumbled and V laughed.

The door closed behind them and the world quieted. It was warm in  there ,  a nd silent under the white light of the automatic lights, heavy with so thick anticipation it felt like it slowed time itself. Seconds dragged by as they stared at each other, Takemura brushed his hand on V’s. “Thief…” And it started again: the kissing, the touching, the want, the hunger. Takemura pulled him in to kiss the living soul out of him and touch him so carefully and so powerful, shoving the coat from V’s shoulder, dragging the pullover over his head, letting V do the same.

Barking him a ‘get over it’ when V made a face upon cold hands touching him and smiling when V laughed and kissed him. And Takemura loved him, V knew, because he saw it in the man’s eyes, and V had his fair share of partners who touched him and fucked him but no one ever touched him like this, not like this man, with so much care and fondness and want and passion and fucking love for fuck sake like he was needed and wanted and invaluable. And he just hoped his own feelings were translating just as well for Takemura to know what he meant for V, how he was loved and treasured and needed back just as much.

And nothing the fucking else mattered, because Johnny was dead but V was alive and Takemura was there with him still, and who the hell would’ve thought? Who the hell would’ve thought he will end up here when he marched into that motel, to Dex, after Jackie’s death ready and knowing all too well he will die? Who would’ve thought there will be a happy end to at least this part of his life when Johnny was interlaced so hard with his mind V was slipping out and they were torturing and torturing and torturing each other just by being so fundamentally different people with different values and visions? Who would’ve thought he will live when he died for the second time in the Arasaka hospital?

And if V failed, if he made all the bad decisions, answered all the wrong answers, then now he embraced his bad decisions wholeheartedly to live his life, for this man here with him to live his life. If he was a bad man, a traitor, a monster, if he had one lesson to learn and he shot that lesson in the head, then V was all of that and more. Much more. And he wasn’t fine with it, proud of it, but if he was to sell the rest of his soul now to work for Arasaka then he will do it, not because Takemura but because the person V had grown up to be, and because he will do what he thinks right. What he thinks will help.

Because if there was one thing he learned from Johnny fucking  Silverhand was how to not give a fuck about what the world thought of him.

He guided Takemura toward his bed, sat down, pulled the man down with him, on him, naked and hard and mad in a way with the want, the arousal, and the feelings. The older man kissed him hard, pushed him  down i nto the mattress, made him spread his arms to the two sides, held him down with confidence and a force that made V ache at a totally different place. Kissed and bit V, his neck, his chest, stomach, and V made noises, such whimpering, begging noises he was quite proud of, proud of the effect he had on the other man, how Takemura released his arms to clutch onto his hips, holding him steady, to not let him buck up as he swallowed his cock deep.

“Gods in hell…” V whispered and let himself go, to enjoy freely, to not let there be anything else just the feelings, and sensations, the touches, the warmth, that coiling feeling in his stomach so good and powerful and almost painful and so fucking right, then he came and the world turned into a white, bright place, his body light and pulsing, hot as hell, panting and crying out, a body on top of him, holding him close, whispering low in his ear in another language, kissing him and V kissing him back, pulling and holding him back just as strong, just as needy.

He reciprocated just as enthusiastically, just as hungry with every skill he'd picked up before, with every need, every warmth, and every emotion he felt for his partner, and when Takemura came into his mouth and V looked up to the wonderful, panting body, to the work of art implants, the blissful, spent expression behind the arm Takemura covered his face with, he felt the warmth coil in his chest anew.

V kissed his way up to the man’s neck, straddled him low, infuriatingly close to the softening cock, pushed the older man’s arm away to look at his face, and for long moments they just stared at each other smiling and so easy and perfect. Takemura reached up, traced a thumb over V’s lips. V bit him playfully.

“I’ll get supplies and ride you next,” V leaned forward, keeping himself up with arms placed on both sides of Takemura’s head. “I will ride you all night, slow, till you go mad with my body.”

“You do you,” the other man shrugged and V loved it because there was warmth and want and emotions in that gaze but playfulness in the tone and V wanted this, all of this, everything. He leaned down for a kiss, then stayed down lied on the other’s chest, entangled, enjoyed the touches, the strokes, caresses, the cuddle, and small kisses on the top of his head. The light was off, just the blue-purple remained with the noises from outside and heartbeat from beneath.

I do me, he thought.

The dawn found V sitting on the edge of the bed, drinking water and watching Takemura’s sleeping form after the long night, pondering how much have changed since the last time they were here like this. He wondered how it would feel waving the man goodbye for the last time, sinking back into his own routines waiting for the appearance of the first wiped body in a cellar, waiting for the first war cry to bellow while he lives his life riding through the city from alley to alley handling the aftermath but not the cause, wondering if the man he loved is still out there or lies dead on the bottom of a river.

His gaze landed on his bag, already packed, waiting in the middle of the low table beside his rifle and katana. He will never know how awful that would feel—and he wears Arasaka gear most of the time anyway. That wasn’t the worst thing he could do with the rest of his life. And about what Johnny would think… V hoped he would understand even knowing he probably wouldn’t. He won’t ever be not a voice in the back of V’s mind, but this life was V’s to lead.

When he looked back at the man sleeping in his bed, silver eyes looked back at him. None of them talked just enjoyed and contemplated the moment. V noticed the moment Takemura noted the bag on the table. The man’s gaze shifted but he kept silent all the same.

“I have questions,” V said then and swallowed the lump in his throat. Takemura looked back at him with a raised brow telling ‘ask away’. “When I go with you to save the world—and I go with you because you asked and I want to—so when I go with you, this comes with,” he gestured between them. Of course, it wasn’t really a question but the other didn’t seem to mind. “You are mine, I am yours, we are lovers and it stays that way whatever the fucking hell happens out there.” This wasn’t a question either and V dared not to look at the other till the answer came.

“Yes.”

“Good,” V relaxed, let out a breath he didn’t keep, but the tightness in his chest released like if something clicked to it’s place with the answer. “Good,” he repeated as he stared out the window taking a last good look outside mentally already going through the list of what has to be done. Takemura got up ad sat beside him. They were both naked, both calm and V passed him the water and the man drank while both of them were watching the sunrise and for a few minutes, everything was alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
